In my specific case, I'm trying to bind a vertex buffer object into a uniform buffer object.
For more details, in my opaque object rendering pipeline in deferred shading, I create a G buffer then render light volumes one point light at a time using a light vbo.
I then need all these lights as a ubo available for iteration in forward rendering for translucent objects.
Texture objects are directly and forever associated with the target type with which they are first used. This is not the case for buffer objects.
There is no such thing as a "vertex buffer object" or a "uniform buffer object" (ignore the name of the corresponding extensions). There are only "buffer objects", which can be used for various OpenGL operations, like providing arrays of vertex data, or the storage for uniform blocks, or any number of other things. It is 100% fine to use a buffer as a source for vertex data, then use the same buffer (and same portion of that buffer) as a source for uniform data.